Parent education in the public school: The parent and preschooler's program

The public school is discussed as a milieu in which to provide parent education for parents of preschool children. Primary prevention within the public school setting is designated as a means by which many children and families can be reached while the mental health of infants and young children is addressed as an integral concern of the community. The Parent and Preschooler's Program is described as an example of the implementation of a preschool parent education program in a public school which was initiated by community members and is eagerly supported by the school system.     

Panic-relevant predictability preferences: a laboratory test

In the present investigation the authors evaluated the role of verbally instructed safety periods as they relate to predictability preference within a single-session challenge paradigm involving recurrent administrations of 20% carbon dioxide (CO-sub-2) enriched air. Participants included 160 nonclinical young adults (91 women, 69 men) between the ages of 18 and 59 (M=21.6 years; SD=7.23). Results indicated that equivalent levels of anxiety were experienced during predictable and unpredictable administrations of 20% CO-sub-2, yet participants preferred predictable compared with unpredictable trials, with women showing a stronger predictability preference than men. Lower anxiety was reported during known safety periods (predictable room air trials) but not during predictable compared with unpredictable administrations of 20% CO-sub-2. Findings are discussed in relation to theoretical and applied implications for the role of predictability in the nature of anxiety and its disorders.     

Foraging and associative learning of visual signals in a parasitic wasp

To cope with environmental variability, animals should gather and use information to reduce uncertainty. In insect parasitoids, associative learning has been widely documented in the context of host foraging. However, despite its potential adaptive value, the insect food searching strategy and cues used to search are poorly understood. In this study, we examined the ability of hymenopteran Venturia canescens females to associate food to a visual cue. To broaden the scope of our results, experiments were performed with both arrhenotokous (sexual) and thelytokous (asexual) individuals. The wasps showed innate attraction for yellow and orange stimuli when presented versus blue stimuli. When trained to associate a food reward with one of the attractive colours (orange), they significantly moved from a distance towards the colour previously associated with food. The choice of the innately preferred colour (yellow) was not modified by associative learning. In the context of food foraging, this study is the first to show associative learning using visual stimuli in a parasitoid and active choice of this colour. This ability gives new insights concerning potential food sources for V. canescens in the field, since flowers are sugar sources, which emit colour signals.     

Changing abilities in recognition of unfamiliar face photographs through childhood and adolescence: Performance on a test of non‐verbal immediate memory (Warrington RMF) from 6 to 16 years

A commonly used test of non‐verbal memory, which measures recognition for unfamiliar face pictures, was developed by Warrington (1984) , the Recognition Memory for Faces (RMF) test. The task has been widely used in adults in relation to neurological impairment of face recognition. We examined the relationship of RMF scores to age in 500 young people aged between 6 and 16 years. A linear relationship obtained between 6 and 10 years, followed by a ‘plateau’ between the ages of 10 and 13, followed by further improvement. Abilities on the test correlated with both verbal and non‐verbal intelligence, but the nonlinear function relating age and RMF survived partialling for intelligence in the younger age groups. The improvement of the adolescents compared with older children also survived partialling for IQ. We found no significant influence of gender or reported pubertal status (which was not obtained for all participants) on RMF once age was taken into account. Performance on other face‐processing tasks (emotion classification and accuracy in line of sight detection) correlated significantly, if moderately, with RMF scores. Despite its age and imperfections, RMF test may nevertheless be a useful indicator of ‘face expertise’ in a developmental context.     

Opinions of personality disorder experts regarding the DSM-IV personality disorders classification system

OBJECTIVE: To survey the opinions of personality disorder (PD) experts on possible revisions in the classification system for PDs in the DSM-V. METHOD: Four hundred members of two international associations, the Association for Research on Personality Disorders, and the International Society for the Study of Personality Disorders, were asked to take a 78-item web survey. RESULTS: Of the experts who completed the survey (N = 96), 74% felt that the DSM-IV's categorical system of PD diagnosis should be replaced. Eighty percent felt that PDs are better conceived of as personality dimensions or illness spectra, than as categories. The most frequently endorsed alternative system for PDs was a mixed system of categories and dimensions. Most experts preferred the PDs to remain on Axis II. Only 31.3% wanted the term, "Borderline Personality Disorder," retained in the DSM-V. CONCLUSIONS: A clear majority of the PD experts were dissatisfied with the current diagnostic system for PDs.     

Taxometric and factor analytic models of anxiety sensitivity among youth: exploring the latent structure of anxiety psychopathology vulnerability

This study represents an effort to better understand the latent structure of anxiety sensitivity (AS), a well-established affect-sensitivity individual difference factor, among youth by employing taxometric and factor analytic approaches in an integrative manner. Taxometric analyses indicated that AS, as indexed by the Child Anxiety Sensitivity Index (CASI; Silverman, Flesig, Rabian, & Peterson, 1991), demonstrates taxonic latent class structure in a large sample of youth from North America (N=4,462; M(age)=15.6 years; SD=1.3). Subsequent confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the latent continuous, multidimensional, 4-factor model of AS among youth (Silverman, Goedhart, Barrett, & Turner, 2003) provided good fit for the CASI data among the complement class ("normative form" of AS), but not among the taxon class ("high-risk form" of AS). EFAs supported the prediction that the AS taxon demonstrates a unique, heretofore unexplored latent continuous, unidimensional factor structure among youth. Findings are discussed in relation to refining our understanding of the latent structure of AS and the clinical implications that arise from it.     

Immediate early gene activation in hippocampus and dorsal striatum: effects of explicit place and response training

Evidence from lesion, electrophysiological, and neuroimaging studies support the hypothesis that the hippocampus and dorsal striatum process afferent inputs in such a way that each structure regulates expression of different behaviors in learning and memory. The present study sought to determine whether rats explicitly trained to perform one of two different learning strategies, spatial or response, would display disparate immediate early gene activation in hippocampus and striatum. c-Fos and Zif268 immunoreactivity (IR) was measured in both hippocampus and striatum 30 or 90 min following criterial performance on a standard plus-maze task (place learners) or a modified T-maze task (response learners). Place and response learning differentially affected c-Fos-IR in striatum but not hippocampus. Specifically, explicit response learning induced greater c-Fos-IR activation in two subregions of the dorsal striatum. This increased c-Fos-IR was dependent upon the number of trials performed prior to reaching behavioral criterion and accuracy of performance during post-testing probe trials. Quantification of Zif268-IR in both hippocampus and striatum failed to distinguish between place and response learners. The changes in c-Fos-IR occurred 30 min, but not 90 min, post-testing. The synthesis of c-Fos early in testing could reflect the recruitment of key structures in learning. Consequently, animals that were able to learn the response task efficiently displayed greater amounts of c-Fos-IR in dorsal striatum.     

Opportunistic Carnivorism

Some carnivores defend the position that the opportunistic consumption of meat is morally permissible even under the assumption that it is morally wrong to act in ways that ause unnecessary suffering to sentient beings. Ordering and consuming chicken once a week, they argue, will not increase the numbers of chickens suffering or slaughtered, since the system of purchasing and farming chickens is not sufficiently fine-tuned to register differences at margin. We argue that, insensitivity of the market notwithstanding, consistent consequentialists are morally prohibited from each additional purchase and consumption of meat.